Role Models

"There's no time to make you a Mandalorian."

If The Old Republic was being released today that line would definitely have been cut.

It's City of Heroes that refers to its classes as archetypes, but there's surely no game that takes that more literally than The Old Republic. SWTOR doesn't try to hide the fact that several of its classes are based not just on character types but on specific characters, with the Smuggler being the most obvious example - and here's a Wookiee companion just in case you somehow didn't realize this is the Han Solo class.

Then there's the Bounty Hunter, aka the Boba Fett. It's a well worn observation that Boba Fett is a weirdly popular character give that he didn't actually do much in The Empire Strikes Back and went out like a schmuck in Return of the Jedi. I suppose being the only thing in the Star Wars Holiday Special that wasn't completely awful counts as a point in his favor, but still... Rarely has a character become so popular from doing so little.

Of course the expanded universe took the potential of the character and ran with it, as did the prequels in a way. Then after all that along came The Mandalorian and a new character became the face of the archetype. Boba just can't catch a break.

Which is why it's so funny that right out of the gate, in the very first scene of the BH story, the game takes the time to point out that no, you're not a Mandalorian. You're the scrappy underdog, and they're the elitest jerks sneering at you for not being one of them. I'm more than okay with that. I've taken a different role model.

As I've mentioned in the past, I never try to go full lightside or full darkside. Instead, I come up with a rough character concept and play the character accordingly. These aren't hard and fast rules that dictate the options I'll select in every situation, but for my Bounty Hunter I've set one key rule: when I'm paid, I always follow my job through.

Because who really wants to be the Mandalorian when you can be Lee Van Cleef in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

Taking my work ethic from a character who's literally introduced as 'The Bad' has unsurprisingly racked me up a fair amount of dark side points. Shoot a man dead in front of his son? Sure. Deliver a target's severed head to his grieving widow? No problem. Arrange for the guy who hired me to be murdered? Well, he didn't specify how I was to resolve that situation...

Amusingly, this has also earned me some light side points, like when I refuse to be bought off. SWTOR has always had some funny ideas about what constitutes doing the 'right' thing.